Bram told her. ‘I understand that Sir Anthony has had to go out.’
‘Yes. A meeting with our patron. He left his apologies.’
‘I was only calling to collect some papers,’ Bram told her. ‘Perhaps…’
‘Yes, he has arranged for the head of our Research and Records Department to provide you with the information you requested. He did suggest that if you had time you might find it worthwhile to have a talk with her. She’s been with the charity for almost twenty years as an archivist, and Sir Anthony thought she would be far more able to supply the kind of information you would need than he could.’
‘I’m sure she can,’ Bram agreed.
‘I’ll take you up to her office,’ the secretary told him. ‘Her name is Taylor Fielding.’
‘Taylor… Is she an American?’ Bram enquired curiously.
‘I don’t think so. Her accent certainly isn’t American, but perhaps she has American connections. She’s a very private person. Although I’ve worked here for nearly eight years myself, I know very little about her.’
Bram didn’t pursue the subject. It was part of his nature to be interested in other people, curious about them, but never in any kind of intrusive way. He was sensitive enough, though, to pick up on the reticence in the secretary’s voice and to wonder at the cause of it. Women working together were normally far more open and forthcoming with one another than men. While it would cause no particular comment for two men to work together for eight years without revealing any personal details of themselves, for two women to do so…
Unless, of course, there was some kind of antipathy between them, but the secretary’s tone hadn’t suggested so.
Which meant that Taylor Fielding, whatever else she might or might not be, was obviously an extremely private person. With an English accent and an American name. Interesting.
As the secretary guided him through the maze of corridors and stairs in the part of the building not yet modernised, he allowed his imagination the luxury of free flow.
Taylor Fielding. Perhaps she would be a little, neat, timid brown mouse of a person, a female version of Beatrix Potter’s industrious Tailor of Gloucester. The workings of his own imagination made his mouth curl in warm amusement with that same smile that the receptionist downstairs was still day-dreaming over.
And that was how Taylor first saw him when she opened her door to Sir Anthony’s secretary’s knock.
Chapter 2
She was nothing like Beatrix Potter’s tailor, nothing at all, Bram acknowledged as he stared in amused appreciation at the woman coming towards him. She was tall, tall with a body so gently and erotically voluptuous that the sight of it forced into the straight jacket and prim high-necked white blouse she wore with a dowdy navy pleated skirt, left him torn between laughter and tears.
Laughter at the total incongruity of such a magnificent body so inappropriately clothed. She should have been wearing something French or Italian in a soft subtle natural shade to highlight her delicate colouring, not that appallingly harsh combination of navy and white which all but doused and drowned it. And tears because his intuition, that streak of intense awareness of other people’s feelings, relayed to him her own loathing and terror of a body so lushly feminine that just to look at her made him want to reach out and stroke her—not out of lust but out of reverence. This woman was no American, not with that pale skin untouched by the sun, and those light, almost luminous blue-grey eyes and dark red hair, hair that was criminally confined in a bun.
The knowledge that totally unexpectedly he had become physically aroused by her, added to the fact that from the look of freezing anger she was giving him, she was also aware of it, made him grimace to himself and call his body firmly to order.
The recognition that the sight of her had given him what in his early teenage days had been universally graphically described by his peers as a ‘hard-on’, coupled with the knowledge that he couldn’t even remember the last time he had experienced such an uncontrollable, intensely physical, response to any woman, left him caught between irritation at his body’s immaturity and a rueful awareness of exactly what Miss Taylor Fielding would no doubt be thinking of him.
He knew she was a Miss because he had seen the name printed on her door.
‘Taylor, this is Mr Soames,’ the secretary announced.
‘Bram.’ Bram introduced himself, stretching out his hand. The look of icy hauteur he received in return was deliberately contrived, a just punishment no doubt for his body’s flagrant breaking of the rules, but the way her body flinched away from him wasn’t. That reaction was far more basic and instinctive.
‘I’ve extracted the information from the records that Sir Anthony asked me to obtain for you,’ she was saying to him as the secretary left. ‘Here it is….’
At any other time Bram would merely have been gently amused and perhaps a little saddened for her at the way she pushed the file towards him, removing her hand from it as though she feared he might somehow make an attempt to touch her. But for some reason on this occasion, and with this woman, her reaction hurt him personally, not for her sake, for his own.
‘I understand that you’ve worked for the charity for almost twenty years.’ Was he imagining the sharp flicker of fear beneath the ice that wintered her eyes? He didn’t think so. So what then was she so afraid of, so afraid that her fear generated an anger with herself that he could almost feel? Him? His question? Both?
Intrigued as much by her contrasting emotions as by the cause of them, Bram found himself wanting to know more about her—much more. He wanted to protect her, and at the same time he also had a very male and far less altruistic desire to unwrap her poor punished body from its cruel constrictions and watch as the anger and coldness were banished from her eyes by warmth and laughter.
Somewhere? Where? His arms…his bed…his…
Whoa…hold on, he warned himself firmly. Didn’t he have enough complications already in his life without adding any more? And besides, hadn’t she already made it plain that there was no way she was going to reciprocate the kind of thoughts he was having?
‘Your file,’ he heard her say coldly, her voice sharp with irritation.
Why was he looking at her like that, watching her like that? Taylor wondered angrily. As though…as though… Hurriedly she looked away from him, feeling both angry and defensive. She didn’t like people, men, watching her so closely. It made her feel nervous…angry…edgy, sending alarm bells clanging through her nervous system. What was it about that kind of look in a man’s eyes—sexually curious, sexually interested, sexually predatory—that once seen, you never forgot, never failed to recognise? It infuriated her that he was looking at her like that. She had done nothing to encourage his interest after all, far from it.
‘Will you have dinner with me?’
The quiet question shocked her, fear and anger leaping through her body like two choke-chained guard dogs taught to respond to threat.
Bram had known what her answer would be even before he asked the question and as he measured her hostility and rejection he wondered if he had totally taken leave of his senses. There were women, plenty of them, who would have moved heaven and earth to be invited out by him, but this woman
